Valve recently pushed SteamOS 3.6.19 – the stable release for the biggest update since 3.5. Steam Deck owners benefit from a large number of bug fixes and optimizations, but new reports suggest that non-Steam games are not launching as intended on the latest update.
The Steam Deck is easily the most popular PC handheld on the market, despite many competitors coming in to try and one-up it. Valve is waiting for a generational leap before committing to a sequel, and remains devoted to upgrading the device (and its Linux-based SteamOS) on a regular basis.
‘Non-Steam games won’t launch’ on SteamOS 3.6
According to a recent Reddit thread, Steam Deck owners are having trouble launching non-Steam games on the device. Games are reportedly stuck on ‘Launching’ after you hit play, with no immediately obvious fix. Restarting the Deck and trying again may resolve the issue, but it can re-occur shortly after, so we wouldn’t consider it an ideal workaround. Multiple people report experiencing this problem since the 3.6 update; others say non-Steam games are taking longer to launch, but they do so eventually.
While the Steam Deck is a fantastic handheld if you’re invested in the Steam ecosystem, bugs like these may cause problems from time to time. Either way, we think it remains one of the best handhelds for games whether they’re available on Steam or not, as third-party software such as Heroic Games Launcher unlocks access to a ton of games on alternative platforms such as Epic, GOG, or Amazon Prime Games.
A possible fix for long launch times
Though this issue seems to be an ongoing one, this is a user-suggested fix to try out before we wait for Valve to bless us with an update. If non-Steam games are indeed launching for you and it just happens to take an annoyingly long time, you can try the following steps:
- Press the Steam button and native to Settings > System > Enable Developer Mode
- Back in Settings, scroll to the bottom to find the Developer options
- If you’re using a 5GHz connection, disable ‘Enable Wifi Power Management’
- Enable ‘Force WPA Supplicant Wifi Backend’
- Restart the Steam Deck
